‘Community’: Movie Would Be Next Chapter For Comedy Series

Community fans’ battle cry “Six Seasons and a Movie” may turn out to be a prophecy. I hear that a movie would be next for Sony TV’s comedy brand, which recently wrapped its sixth season and first on Yahoo.

It has been a busy news day in Greendale land, starting off with comments made by star Joel McHale in an interview, indicating that the show is over as the cast’s contracts were all up after Season 6. “There is just not enough money to be able to pay for the show,” he was quoted as saying.

The comments triggered a slew of “Community is cancelled” headlines, prompting McHale to tweet, “Easy sugar-bear, Community is not canceled,” and Yahoo to issue a statement that “we’ve seen tremendous value in our partnership with Sony and are continuing to discuss future opportunities for Community.”

One thing Yahoo’s statement does not specify is what those “future opportunities” may be. I hear it would be a movie, and if there is a next Community chapter, that would be it.

I hear an idea for a theatrical release was briefly discussed but the conversation quickly focused on doing the film for a digital distribution. As a partner on Season 6, Yahoo would get first dibs. Yahoo has not yet released an original movie, something SVOD services like Netflix and Amazon have been doing increasingly, including with popular comedy brands like Adam Sandler (Netflix) and David Spade’s Joe Dirt (Amazon).

While a seventh season of the Dan Harmon-created show would indeed be very hard to put together as many actors from the main cast have signed on for new gigs, a movie is considered an option that could more easily bring the gang back together.

“I would love to do a movie,” Community co-star Ken Jeong, who has his own series, ABC’s Dr. Ken, said at TCA this afternoon. “Doing a movie would be amazing.”

Community creator/showrunner Harmon is currently away working on another project but is expected to engage in conversations on a potential movie when he becomes available.

As one insider quipped, “We are not going to let all those ‘Six Seasons and a Movie T-Shirts go to waste…”